By David Fortier
Come Sunday morning, we will have had a visit from one of the kids and grandbaby. That was on Wednesday, and Mary will have had returned the visit on Friday, where she spent the day getting to know said grandbaby’s routine for future babysitting stints.
Mary reports that this grandbaby is very happy sharing stuffed animals, insisting that you join in the activities with a stuffed friend of your own. In addition, little is lost on this grandbaby, who, while Mary was reading, corrected her when Mary misread stars for stairs.
“Stairs, Gaga, stairs.”
Other than that, our week here was fairly uneventful. We rarely watch television during the week, so this week was no different except that, thinking ahead, we did DVR (yes, DVR not stream) the Winter Olympics for our weekend viewing. We ended up watching most of the figure skating events, and of course, we had to talk about the young Russian phenom, who is now facing some type of censure for having tested positive for drugs back in December.
At TBE, we followed the latest council meeting and the reversal of the Wheeler Clinic decision. It was with some interest that I learned that the mayor, back in November, rescinded a proclamation from March 2020 regarding the state of the pandemic. We are still discussing what to make of that, and why it has become public now.
Another conversation that we are having among ourselves is about how to raise funds to take our endeavor to the next level. We are considering a GoFundMe campaign, as well as offering memberships beginning at $6 a month along the lines of public radio. We need to expand our coverage and to do this week need to be able to pay for quality reporting. A dream would be to hire our own reporters.
As a volunteer operation, we have the obvious limitations—too few people, so much to cover. We take a hit from some readers because we can’t get to some stories, which require a considerable amount of time and resources. And for others, because we focus on city government (yes, we have ramped up our city reporting since the latest election, but that was our plan no matter who won), the reporting is dismissed as bias.
We are doing our best to simply report on issues that are of some significance to Bristol’s citizens, and we will continue to do that, and to do our best with our limited resources. Having the funds to provide a wider swath of stories would make everyone happier, especially this small band of volunteers.
We will be making more announcements about our fundraising in the next few weeks.
For this week’s, listening/reading assignment, I am going to point you in the direction of the podcast Science Vs, a podcast dedicated to addressing a variety of issues through the lens of science. This particular podcast focuses on the Joe Rogan-Spotify situation. The podcast, “Joe Rogan: The Malone Interview,” takes a deep dive into the accusations against Rogan, one of the most popular podcasters in the world, and in doing helps puts things into the proper perspective. Click here for the link.
Until next week, be well and stay healthy.
“Come Sunday morning” is intended to be a weekly review, a recounting of the past week and an anticipation of week to come. Among its features will be reviews of old and new books, sharing of favorite podcasts, some family news, Bristol events and happenings and issues surrounding education, work and community journalism. He can be reached at dfortier@bristoledition.org.